Sarah Ferguson waves the to the crowd was she attends the Easter Matins Service at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. (AP Photo/ File) At least seven charities have dropped Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson as their patron or ambassador after she called the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a “supreme friend” in a 2011 email and appeared to apologise for her public criticism of him in the alleged email published in The Sun and the Mail on Sunday, BBC reported.
A children’s hospice, Julia’s House, was the first to remove Sarah Ferguson, who is Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, stating that it was “inappropriate” for the Duchess of York to continue in her role.
Among the others who have dropped Ferguson as the patron, include: The Teenage Cancer Trust, Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Children’s Literacy Charity, National Foundation for Retired Service Animals and Prevent Breast Cancer. The British Heart Foundation said the duchess would not be their ambassador anymore.
A spokesperson for the duchess said she wasn’t commenting on the decisions made by the charities to end their link with her.
The development comes after two newspapers published the email sent by the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2011, where she appeared to privately apologise for her public rejection of Epstein and said, “You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.”
The Sun and the Mail on Sunday further reported that the email was sent weeks after the duchess had publicly distanced herself from the sex offender. Providing a clarification on the incident, a spokesperson for the duchess said the email sent in 2011 was only to counter a threat which Epstein had made to file a defamation case against her.
During the time in 2011, the duchess of York had called her involvement with Epstein a “gigantic error of judgement” and had promised that she would have nothing to do with Epstein again, stating, “I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children.”
“I cannot state more strongly that I know a terrible, terrible error of judgement was made, my having anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein. What he did was wrong and for which he was rightly jailed,” Ferguson had said, BBC reported.
(with inputs from BBC)
